green crow gleaming

by SID SIBO

The blacktop sweated into its wind-dusted ditches. We agreed on a Splatter Drip Canyon hike, in Fishlake National Forest, because on the map it looked shaded, and sounded wet. Our first summer here, after my divorce finally came through, and we wanted to get away from all 570 pairs of inquisitive eyes in Loa, Utah.

The canyon’s walls changed everything, hiding the harsh sun, freshening the emerald satin of cottonwood leaves. Early afternoon sky’s strange cobalt seemed mountain dusk. We shared a water bottle, and Anson sprayed me through pursed lips. Then, laughing, he licked water off my neck.

A murmur below my ear. Mmmm. Salty.

I could smell potent sweat, a sweet stink distinguishing him from my ex-wife. Giddy with peppered cottonwood aroma, I filled my mouth to squirt water across his bare chest.

We scrambled along the canyon bottom, boulders small enough to trip on, or large as RVs, curving our path. Our relationship had meandered too, my resistance rocklike—but in the end, porous. He never insisted on a particular way. His sighs, lifting from blankets spread on hidden state park picnic tables, never sounded melancholy. He taught me to cherish moonlight, too long lost to TV glow. My wife probably knew.

Anson skipped halfway across the single log footbridge before he turned and noticed me, stuck. What’s the matter?

I’m not good at exposure, I admitted. A climber’s term, though I was no climber. The things one picks up in Starbucks. Handrails might’ve helped. One foot touched the log, and it shivered, a subtle, invisible twitch.

Anson cocked his head like a kitten but waited on the far side, unjudging. Tony?

My second foot slid on, the de-barked log providing no resistance. I couldn’t lift one foot over the other, but maybe I could shuffle across. My knees began to shake, and with them, the log writhed, no longer subtle. Rocks shifted into each other underground, earth vibrating on the anvils of my ears.

I sank, my hands clasping each side of the log. My ass was pinioned on the inflection point of the log’s curve, my clenched butt-cheeks hanging in insubstantial air.

You’re only three feet above the creek, Anson said. The creek’s only twenty inches deep. You’re a math teacher. Logical, right?

I scooted my heels forward, lifted my butt to follow. Inches at a time, but moving. The growling underground grew louder as my blood pressure rose to meet my progress. A yoga instructor would have poked a bony finger at my clamped jaws.

Look, Anson said. The water’s so clear you can see the sculpted sand. Can’t get hurt.

Logic has nothing to do with anything human. Air scared me. No way I could look down at that snickering creek, that fluid art. I smelled its iron blood. Five more inches, and skinny limbs from the cottonwood on the far side thrust into my space. Illogically, they kept vertigo at bay. I eased forward, weight on my knees, and on my gripping hands.

Anson celebrated my stunted success. Almost got it. His smile flashed.

Flimsy branches, no support, flexed in my fingers, but still I lifted from crawl to crouch. Through my sneakers’ rubber soles, useless toes groped the footbridge. My backbone was Jell-O salad, a must-have at every Mormon funeral. The cottonwood’s stalwart arm beckoned. My legs edged onward.

I touched ridged bark, the tree’s stretched strength. I could look down eroded banks to where the trunk extended into the creek’s silted edge. The limb hung eight feet above water level, easy climbing. When I was a kid, heights never scared me. Anson reached out his hand as I stood upright, and our fingers twined. A cold breeze brushed us.

The bank collapsed under his feet, and he slipped out of my clasp, into rising water, laughing again, incredulous. My other arm clung around the tree’s main trunk. The tremor crescendoed, crashing, carrying rocks and roots before a mud-colored roil of solid water that swallowed him.

The cottonwood hovered, but wouldn’t last long. Sapphire sky seemed my only hope. Hand over hand. Branches thinned, roots loosened. A gleaming green crow winged past and met my eye. I was high enough that I might—might—chance a leap to the red rock wall on the opposite bank. I had to look for Anson. Salt sweat and tears leaked between my hammering teeth. Flashing cottonwood leaves whipped my quaking knees as they bent.

Groundless, I scrabbled through surprised air.